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Price Elasticity of Demand for Term Life Insurance and Adverse Selection

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Author Info
Mark V. Pauly
Kate H. Withers
Krupa Subramanian-Viswana
Jean Lemaire
John C. Hershey
Abstract

This paper provides an empirical estimate of price' and risk' elasticities of demand for term life insurance for those who purchase some insurance. It finds that the elasticity with respect to changes in premiums is generally higher than the elasticity with respect to changes in risk. It also finds that the elasticity, in the range of -0.3 to -0.5, is sufficiently low that adverse selection in term life insurance is unlikely to lead to a death spiral and may not even lead to measured effects of adverse selection on total purchases.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 9925.

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Date of creation: Aug 2003
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9925

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D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. John A. Nordin, 1976. "A Proposed Modification of Taylor's Demand Analysis: Comment," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 7(2), pages 719-721, Autumn. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Hausman, Jerry A & Wise, David A, 1980. "Discontinuous Budget Constraints and Estimation: The Demand for Housing," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(1), pages 75-96, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Lester D. Taylor, 1975. "The Demand for Electricity: A Survey," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 6(1), pages 74-110, Spring. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Hausman, Jerry A, 1985. "The Econometrics of Nonlinear Budget Sets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1255-82, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. John Cawley & Tomas Philipson, 1999. "An Empirical Examination of Information Barriers to Trade in Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 827-846, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Rothschild, Michael & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1976. "Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 90(4), pages 630-49, November.
  7. Jeffrey R. Brown & Austan Goolsbee, 2000. "Does the Internet Make Markets More Competitive?," NBER Working Papers 7996, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Cardon, James H & Hendel, Igal, 2001. "Asymmetric Information in Health Insurance: Evidence from the National Medical Expenditure Survey," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(3), pages 408-27, Autumn.
  9. Babbel, David F, 1985. " The Price Elasticity of Demand for Whole Life Insurance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(1), pages 225-39, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Marc Pomp & M. Bijlsma & Machiel van Dijk & Michiel van Leuvensteijn & C. Zonderland, 2005. "Competition in markets for life insurance," CPB Documents 96, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. [Downloadable!]
  2. Deborah Wilson, 2005. "Acquisition and disclosure of genetic information under alternative policy regimes," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 05/118, Department of Economics, University of Bristol, UK. [Downloadable!]
  3. Michael Hoy & Julia Witt, 2005. "Welfare Effects of Banning Genetic Information in the Life Insurance Market: The Case of BRCA1/2 Genes," Working Papers 0505, University of Guelph, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Shawn Cole & Xavier Giné & Jeremy Tobacman & Petia Topalova & Robert Townsend & James Vickery, 2009. "Barriers to household risk management: evidence from India," Staff Reports 373, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. [Downloadable!]
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